Suggesting a few feature improvement concerning item focus in lists:
After removing a PND and returning to the list, the next sibling of the deleted item shall be selected (focused)
Currently: If you remove a PND and return to the list (via the X-button) PNDmanager selects the first PND in the list.
Example: I currently do a PND housecleaning on my Pandora — reducing PNDs I rarely use — and this behavior is extremely annoying.
Going through that list would be far easier and quicker if PNDmanager would remember the following item after the current item, and selecting it if the current gets removed instead of loosing your context by jumping to the first item.
I am suggesting to select the following item rather than the previous item, because mostly you edit a list from top to bottom (regardless of your sort option) thus you already went over the previous item.
Side note:
The default file manager Thunar sucks in a similar regard — not even in the special case of deleting an item, but just with mere hierarchy navigation it sucks!
Good interaction design in a file browser: If you return to a parent item, it should have the folder selected from which you just came.
Thunar just has nothing selected and adjusts the window scrolling to the very top. If you were in a very long list, it could happen that you do not even see the folder from which you just came, if it happens to be below the fold. This is a navigational concept where you have nothing to hold on! You have to start from the beginning each time! Sucks big time. Especially in long/deep folder/listing structures.
Removing characters from "filter as you type" shall keep currently selected item selected
If you remove characters, you do this for these main reasons
1) You want to delete the whole string in order to
a) see the entire list again
B) retype an entirely new query
2) You mistyped the recent 1-2, at most 3, characters and want to correct your mistake.
3) Rare case: You get too little results, and want to find a smaller common denominator for getting more results.
As of now PNDmanager differs conceptually (I guess not by voluntary interaction design, but just by the way the code handles this use case)
Removing a character is treated as "creating a new query", thus changing focus. Which makes little to no sense at all.
Rare exception: Nr 3. But still in that case: The focus should still be kept on your currently selected item, only the amount of result should change.
I propose the following: Removing characters does only alter the results but not the selection.
The current selection WILL match the new query which is 1 character shorter than the previous one.
Except when the query is entirely removed (technically when it reaches NULL characters length).
Still then it is good to keep the most recent item selected and within the viewport.
(You probably used the instant type not as a filter but as a "quickly jump to the item matching my input but keep the rest visible", and although PNDmanager does not use this approach but rather an "instant filtering" approach, you nevertheless get this final result after having cleared the input again, thus you get the functionality of both concepts).